Elusive Answers

May sat in her room, as usual these past few weeks. Her desk looked like the workspace of a patient in an asylum: drawings were scrawled on sheets of paper littering its surface, notes on scraps torn from her notebook filling in the gaps.

She threw her notebook onto the top of the haphazard mound adorning her desk, sending it sliding across it. The force of throwing it spun her around in her chair, and she extended one of her crossed legs down to the floor below her to stop herself spinning.

She just couldn’t figure it out: the source of the extirpations still eluded her, after all this time. It made no sense that a natural phenomenon could give rise to this destruction spontaneously. It was the piece of the puzzle that she’d been stuck on, and if she figured that out, the rest of the problem would open itself up to her.

Or, that was the idea.

May sighed. If only Dad would—

She cut herself off. No, she thought. I’m sick of leaning on him. She glanced at the bookshelf in the corner of her room, stuffed to the point of almost collapsing due to the weight of all the physics and chemistry textbooks she’d shoved into it. She still had quite a mound to go through before she’d been through all of them, but her understanding had become increasingly complete over the past month, with her finishing a textbook at about the end of the week—every week.

Her eyes strayed as she mapped out her studies, until they came to rest on a framed photo on the top of her dresser. It was framed in shiny metal and glass. The longer she stared, the more the faintest dancing rainbow painted across the far wall revealed itself as the light from the window refracted through and reflected off it.

The photo it held showed her, on her father’s shoulders as a nine year old girl. He looked… happy. Smiling. And next to him: her mother. She cradled baby Alice in her arms, staring deadpan into the camera. Anyone else that looked at the photo would have thought her unhappy to be holding her baby. But May remembered: that was just how she looked when she was happy. When they were together.

May sighed, spinning around to stem the flow of memories. She drew her phone from her pocket, mindlessly calling the contact that had become far too natural to call every day.

The call tone beeped for a while before the other line finally clicked. The girl that answered breathed into the microphone, as she did every time she answered.

“Hello, May,” came Bianca’s voice from the phone. “What’s up?”

“Hi. Nothing, really. Just wanted to call you to get some thinking going.” May straightened in her chair, Bianca’s voice reinvigorating her.

After the conversation they’d had in the park a few weeks before, Bianca had been more standoffish; harder to get a hold of. But May’s persistence led to them talking almost every day. Some days, when her mind was thoroughly plagued by ideas, with her unable to make headway on any one of them on her own, she would just spam Bianca until she picked up.

“What did you want to talk about?” Bianca asked.

“Nothing in particular, but…” May glanced over her shoulder at the photo again. “I wanted to ask… about my mom.”

Bianca was silent on the other line. After their conversation a few weeks ago, they’d not returned to the subject again. At least, not directly.

“Like, why were you asking about her the other day?”

“That wasn’t the other day; it was about a month and a half ago now,” she replied. Her voice was level, and, as usual, May couldn’t see through the shroud of her level demeanor.

“Right, well, regardless.”

Bianca was silent again in response. May still found it strange that Bianca was somehow wrapped up in everything—she was just a random girl. And their conversation in the playground made her think that she was right to be suspicious.

Finally, Bianca spoke. “Let’s talk about that another time. It’s a long story anyway.”

“Okay, but—”

“Did you have any other questions? I have to go.”

“Uh…” May frantically picked up her notebook. Not exactly how she’d expected this to go. But as she flipped past page after page of irrelevant notes, her mind was empty of any questions she could ask otherwise. “Can’t you just… give me a summary?”

“No.”

The swiftness and brevity of her response left no room for negotiation, by May’s estimation. She got the feeling that her question might go unanswered. But when has that ever stopped me? she thought.

“Come on, Bianca. Just—”

“May.”

May cut her sentence short and sighed, but stayed silent after to give Bianca room to speak.

“I will tell you later on.”

“Okay, fine.” May glanced at her clock. It was still the early morning. “Tell me over coffee later today.”

“...I need to go.”

Shit, May thought. “Uh, wait!” She pulled the phone away from her ear as she shouted into it. Bianca wasn’t normally so abrupt—and this was bordering on discourteous, which May knew was not in her nature. She’d touched a nerve somehow.

In some way, that was all the answer she needed about her mother. But she couldn’t help but want to dig for more.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to be pushy.” She slouched in her chair as the line remained connected. Probably not a good idea to prod about anything else she said that night, either.

“Is there anything else?”

“Yeah,” she replied, inhaling sharply. But after pausing for a moment, she let it out, saying instead, “Can you grab coffee later?”

“I can this afternoon. I’m not in the area at the moment.”

“Okay. I have a new theory I want to run by you.” For once, it was a lie. May looked at the picture of her family again. They all looked so happy together.

Together.

“I have to go. I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah, see you—”

The other line beeped, the call ended by Bianca. May’s arm fell back to her side. She turned around in her chair again to face her desk. She reached for the notebook and pen. But her hand stopped halfway.

Instead, with a sigh, she stood up, walking over to her dresser. The photo’s glossy metal frame reflected a dancing light across her hand. She grabbed it, and then placed it on her desk’s corner.

But as she sat down, she felt something foreign.

She sat down in the chair, the warmth of the light from her window illuminating her skin, and the rainbow colors on the wall framing the photo. Her heart felt like it beat through molasses in her chest.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she looked at her family, and her work, and herself.

She exhaled hard. She grabbed the photo, pressing it gently onto the surface of the table. Her hand balled into a fist, and she punched herself in the thigh.

“Come on, May.” Her hands pressed in against both sides of her head. “If they don’t want to help, just do it yourself. Then they’ll see.” She released the pressure, dragging her notebook and pen over to her. “If they refuse to look, I’ll just force them to.”